Posted on 09/23/2002 9:58:19 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
....its a disaster of nearly epic proportions.
Im not even a major Superman nut. Im not going to pretend that I have some overriding passion about this particular character and what he means or his iconic value or anything. Superman is, I think, fairly potent pop mythology, and the best Superman stories are slight moral fables with some kick ass adventure and action thrown in. His origin is one of the most recognizable in all of Western literature. His planet explodes. He comes to Earth. Hes raised as human. The sun gives him powers. And he chooses to do good in this world. Pretty simple stuff. Pretty hard to screw up.
So, of course, first off, Krypton doesnt explode.
Thats not where the film starts, though. The film starts with a news broadcast. The anchor on TV looks frazzled, panicked. He tells everyone to get underground, that the Pyramids have been destroyed, that Paris is burning, that most of South America is gone. He blames it all on Superman. Theres a terrible noise, and we whipcut to outside, to the streets of Gotham City (yes, I said Gotham), where a figure in body armor and a ninjas cloak walks down the center of the street, using breath that is the force of a thousand hurricanes to blow buses and cars away, flattening five square blocks in the process.
Theres a WHOOSH in the distance, and the Kryptonian stops. This is TY-ZOR. Hes the same age as Superman, around 30 years old. As he hears the sound getting closer, he smiles, as if this is exactly what he wants.
BAM!
Two red boots hit the pavement in the foreground, like an NBA MVP coming down from a slam dunk. We move around the figure, up a very familiar costume, red and blue with a billowing cape. We see the S shaped icon. We finally see his face. Hes bruised. Hes bloodied. Hes winded. Whoever this Ty-Zor is... hes kicking Supermans ass.
They take off, start to chase each other through the sky. Predictably enough, they both are martial arts experts, and they have a high-speed super-powered martial arts fight in mid-air, kicking each other through buildings on a scale that SUPERMAN II could have never managed. At one point, we follow Superman in close-up as he flies backwards through a building, people scattering to get out of his way. Its big action. Its well written. Ty-Zor lures Superman into a NASA hangar thats made largely of lead. Superman walks into the situation blind, not sure whats going on. Ty-Zor taunts him over a speaker system, drawing him further in.
Superman finds a giant water testing tank and sees something off-camera that makes him stop. Hes terrified. He collapses in pain. He tries to crawl away but cant. Ty-Zor taunts him again over the hidden speakers.
TY-ZOR
I want to hear you cry, Kal-El. Like your mother cried. Cry for me... Superman!
And as blisters erupt all over Superman and he cries out in pain, we SHOCK CUT TO:
Naboo.
Seriously. Its Naboo. Oh, sure, they call it Krypton in the script, but its instantly recognizable as the Naboo of EPISODE I. Green fields. Forests nearby. Little girl playing. Everything peaceful.
And then the big war machines come rolling in.
Again, Im picturing EPISODE I. Three-legged robot tanks. Mechanical soldiers taking a royal city. A civil war raging suddenly, ruining the peaceful green planet.
JOR-EL is a young man at this point, 39 years old, the leader of the Senate. As the attack gets underway and reports of key military failures roll in, Jor-El orders everyone to leave the War Room and go to their families, so at least theyll be together at the end.
Jor-Els got other plans, though. Seems theres some prophecy, and he and Lara have a rocket shipt theyve built for just this occasion, and Jor-El is determined that the only way to save their baby is to send him away. His rocket blasts off as the mechanical warriors come bursting in, and Jor-El sends his wife away at the last second with a creature called TAGA, described as a giant turtle with no shell. They take off, Jor-El goes outside to fight, and Jor-El ends up captured, beaten badly, taken before KATA-ZOR and his son TY-ZOR. Kata-Zor tells Jor-El that he knows about The Prophecy and hes crazy, and hes gonna track the baby down and kill him, and someone says that the pod could have gone any one of a thousand places, and Kata-Zor screams THEN SEND A THOUSAND MEN!
And it was about here that I had to check the cover of the script again. What the ****? I mean, that opening with Superman and the Kryptonian dude in the streets... that was pretty cool. Its silly that Superman has to do martial arts just because THE MATRIX made money, but Ill learn to live with it, I suppose.
But what the hell is this nonsense about Krypton not exploding? Whats this Prophecy crap? Whos Kata-Zor and why do I care? The last shot of this long Krypton prologue is of a thousand probe pods being sent out, away from the red sun of their home, all of them looking for the baby.
Our MUSIC SWELLS its EPIC and then...
Smallville. Martha and Jonathan Kent are eating breakfast. Okay. This is good. After all, youd have to be genuinely retarded to screw up Smallville stuff by this point. Everythings played big. For example, theyre not driving when the baby crashes. Instead, the pod lands in their field, heading straight for the house, and they have to run outside to get out of the way, only to see it come to rest an inch from the kitchen window when it finally slows down.
They take the baby in. His powers begin to manifest almost immediately. He tosses a couch. He flies. Even what he leaves in his diapers seems super-powered based on Jonathans weak-kneed reaction. The Kents are poor, struggling with their bills, but they are determined to provide for this strange orphaned baby, raising him as thei own, teaching him restraint above all else. Control. Basically, they make him so scared of what he can do that hes afraid to do anything. A wicked landlord (drawn so broadly that he might as well have a mustache to twirl) tries to rape Martha Kent, and the six-year-old boy attacks, beats, and nearly kills the man. The guy freaks out and calls Clark the devil and a monster.
Hes a resolute outsider as he grows up, able to hear what his classmates say about him from miles away. When hes 14, he finds a silver cannister hidden in his parents closet (hes busy using his x-ray vision to see whats in his Christmas presents). Its not normal, and it slides open like liquid. Some sort of red substance is inside, neither liquid nor solid, and it suddenly SPRINGS out...
The Superman suit. The one you know.
Full-sized, standing by itself, as if worn by a grown man, cape waving.
And when Clark goes to touch it, it rips his clothes off and sucks him into the suit. Hes obviously too small for it, but that doesnt stop him. He runs out and begins to experiment with it, running and leaping and finally taking off. Flying. In a suit thats too big for him. And when he lands, its head-first, destroying a tractor right in front of Martha and Jonathan, who just came home.
This, of course, leads to the talk. Clark learns that hes not their son naturally. That hes not even from Earth naturally. And he takes the suit off and runs outside, confused and upset, and he looks up into the sky at the stars, wondering where he came from, and just as we really start to connect with Clark... just as they start to get to the heart of who he is...
... we cut back to Naboo.
More stuff with Taga the turtle creature and Lara, Supermans decidedly not-dead mom. Shes captured. Shes tortured by Ty-Zor, who is about Clarks age. He wants to know where Kal-El was sent, and when she wont tell, she becomes Supermans finally-dead mom.
And then its back to Earth. Clarks 20. Hes in college. Hes an undeclared major, sort of drifting through school, not sure what he wants to do with his life. He meets LOIS LANE at a party. Shes annoyed, impatient, sorry she came. Its a loud, obnoxious kegger, and its obvious neither one of them belongs there. This is the kind of stuff that Abrams can do in his sleep after FELICITY and the first season of ALIAS. Smart flirting. And even though its a total reinvention of how they meet, its okay. Its decent character work. She totally rolls over him, of course. She wants to be a reporter. She wants to work at the DAILY PLANET. Theres a near-altercation where Clark gets pushed around, and its Lois who steps in and uses Krav Maga blows to knock the bully out. And just like that, shes gone, and Clark is smitten.
And then we jump forward in time again, seven years, and we meet the character who is, in my opinion, going to cause the most controversy in the fan community.
CIA Special Agent DR. LEX LUTHOR.
Hes in his 50s with closely cropped hair. Hes brought in to Dust City, Arizona where police have cordoned off what appears to be a crash site. For a UFO.
Because thats what CIA Special Agent Dr. Lex Luthor does. Hes the Director of the Special Operations Division of the CIA. Which basically means that he chases UFO activity and tries to either verify or debunk it.
The crash site turns out to be a hoax, though, set up by a couple of local kids. Luthor exposes the hoax, and is about to leave when he gets snapped by a photographer. We cut to a close-up of the DAILY PLANET, where theres a headline splashed across the front page:
CIA SPENDS MILLIONS ON LITTLE GREEN MEN.
By Lois Lane.
Seems she paid the kids to set up the hoax. Shes chasing Luthor and his budget, determined to expose his work as ridiculous. Luthor pressures his bosses to let him go public with The Big Secret.
In Metropolis, Lois is getting bitched out by her editor, Perry White, for her techniques even as Jimmy Olsen gives Clark Kent a tour of the place. Its Clarks first day. And now hes the age he was in the opening. Jimmys a little younger, and is described as Brooklyn-born and somewhat effeminate. Perry White makes jokes about Jimmys boyfriend later in the scene. Its one of those bizarre choices that you hope youre misreading. Its suggested more than anything, but it is suggested. It certainly could be read that way. Did they just arbitrarily decide to suggest that Jimmys gay?
Can I ask what that adds to anything? Is it going to be a major subplot? If not, then did you really have to do it? Is this what you see as edgy, or as a hip way to update a character? I have no problem with seeing gay characters show up in mainstream films, but when its an arbitrary decision like this, one has to wonder what the point is. I remember that Kevin Smith once talked about how following screenings of CHASING AMY and STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE THE SPECIAL EDITION, Jon Peters decided he wanted a gay robot in the SUPERMAN LIVES script that Smith was writing at the time. Is this another way for Peters to work the jones out?
Luthor goes public with a discovery that justifies his budget. He shows slides of a crash recovery site from nine years earlier. And this is twenty-nine years after the opening Krypton scenes, so... Luthors talking about a crash... came about twenty years after Clark first landed. The slides show a capsule almost exactly like Clarks. Lex says the capsule is proof that there is an alien visitor hiding somewhere on Earth, and he intends to find him.
Clark has a big panic attack, of course, and calls home to talk to his mom and to verify that their capsule is still hidden in the barn, setting up the mystery of the film. Whose capsule is the second one?
Who is the second Kryptonian?
I started to get a really bad feeling when they introduced this plot thread, and I started hoping... actively praying... that they werent headed where I thought they were headed.
Theres more flirting. Theres no Superman yet. Its just Clark following Lois around and Lois getting into trouble with her various stories. She gets assigned to a cover the President on Air Force One, a second chance from Perry to prove herself, and as theyre in the air, there is a sudden, unexpected mechanical failure, and the plane begins to fall. Clark hears the incident on the radio.
He rips open that cannister.
And now, for the first time, hes the right size for the suit. And it climbs up onto him again and he takes off into the sky, flying for the first time since moving to the city.
And for this one sequence, JJ Abrams gets everything right. Every note is perfectly played. Supermans debut to the world is remarkable. Breathtaking. A moment of perfectly played heroism.
And at the end of the scene, once the plane is on the ground, as everyone is freaking out over the mere idea of a man who can fly, the President tries to thank Clark, who walks right by him, worried, so he can check on Lois.
For some reason, though, she doesnt recognize him.
No one does.
Lex sees him on TV, though, and he knows full well what it means. It means that the Visitor has finally revealed himself.
And Jonathan Kent hears him on the radio, and for a moment, hes enormously proud of his son, and as he runs to tell his wife, he pulls a Glen Ford. Face down.
Exit Pa Kent.
Then its back to Naboo, for more crap we couldnt care less about. I cannot stress this enough. Krypton is so powerfully uninteresting in the script that my eyes would glaze over at the mere sight of the word. We find Kata-Zor playing some kind of silly space chess with PREDIUS (a concentration camp prisoner who we dont learn anything about, but who the script promises will be very important in the next film), and Ty-Zor comes in to tell his dad that they found Kal-El. Because I guess they were watching Earth TV just in case or something. But however they know, they decide to send some war machines to find and kill Kal-El. Ty-Zor begs for the gig.
Ill give Abrams this: he sure does love to pile on the angst. This is the most tortured Superman Ive ever read. He is so torn up over his fathers death that he vows never to put the suit on again. Luthors efforts to get more funding to find Superman result in Luthors being fired. He flips out and screams at the Senators who are pulling the plug on his program. He tells them that theyre all going to die. They dont believe it. They think Superman is a hero. After all, he just saved The President. Theyre not about to fund Lexs effort to track him down and destroy him.
Theres another bizarre choice in here, one of those head-scratchers that just pull you out of the thing. Martha happens to find some metal thingies that she forgot to give Clark earlier. The metal thingies, if you put them together the right way, form the negative space from the S symbol from the costume. Turns out, these were given to the Kents before Kal-El ever arrived.
By Jor-El.
During his visit to Earth, when he picked the Kents to be Kal-Els new parents.
For some reason, Martha never put all of this together, but suddenly we get this rush of exposition all at once. Each of the metal thingies means something different. Courage. Sacrifice. Wisdom. Faith. Love. Once she remembers this, shes suddenly quite sure that hes supposed to go save the world. From what, were not sure. Theres no major threat to speak of. But she decides thats his mission, and because of the metal thingies and a photo of Jor-El, Clark decides shes right.
The second best Superman sequence in the film is the montage that follows, as we see him slowly slip into this new role. He goes to a mountain top in the Andes and just... listens. Theres cries for help from all over the world, and at first, it seems to be too much. But he focuses in on one particular cry. Then another. Then another. And he begins to fly from place to place, fast as he can, never staying for thanks. And for this three or four pages, Abrams brings it all together again.
Look... I think JJ Abrams could well be the right guy for the job. I think he might have a great Superman script in him. The moments that are good are so good they make you woozy. This is the Superman that lives right alongside Santa Claus and Bugs Bunny and Luke Skywalker in the inner lives of American children from the last few generations, the simple force of good wrapped in red and blue. If there was an entire film of this stuff, Id be weeping right now, telling you how we were in for this amazing love letter, this beautiful reintroduction to this classic character.
But of course thats not what it is. No, Warner Bros. wants to recreate things that dont need to be recreated. They want to distance themselves from whats come before. I mean, never mind the fact that most of this script stands in direct opposition to what is established canon for the character over the years. What about the time and energy that fans are investing in SMALLVILLE? Again... its not really my thing. Im not a big fan of the show. It seemed like every time I watched it last year, there was some sort of wackiness resulting from Kryptonite, and it started to get really old really quickly. But there are fans of the show... lots of them... and in an age of X-FILES and other shows making a quick transition to the bigscreen, its not unreasonable to think that Tom Welling was being groomed to step up at some point and play Superman at the end of the learning process that the TV show was going to show.
No chance of that. At this point, if Warner Bros. backs this Abrams draft (and what I read allegedly predates Ratners hiring this past week, meaning McG supposedly had a lot of input into it), then theres no room for Welling or the Lex Luthor that fans seem so fond of or any of those elements in the bigscreen franchise.
Lois and Superman fall in love. Theres a nice tribute to Donners film in the way she interviews him and then they share a flight over the city at night. Luthors plan is revealed: hes seen a vision of the Visitors coming to find the first Visitor, and he wants to help them take over the Earth in exchange for power. The warship arrives on Earth, landing in Washington D.C. Lois finds out about Luthors plan, which involves some sort of material stolen from the Smithsonian called kryptonite, and she rushes to warn Superman before his confrontation.
What unfolds for the next twenty pages or so is an enormous, ungodly fight between Superman and the various Kryptonians who have come to Earth to assist Ty-Zor. They battle through Washington, destroying much of it before Ty-Zor and the others retreat to regroup and hook up with Lex. The public turns on Superman and blames him for the bad guys coming to Earth.
Keep in mind that all of this is within days of Supermans first appearance. The timetable is something ridiculous like a week. Theyre working to pack so much into this script that it begins to smell desperate. Theres only so many pages of superbeings throwing each other through buildings that can be considered interesting, and I dont know how much entertainment value audiences are going to find post 9/11 in watching beloved Washington landmarks be destroyed. Finally, as the Kryptonians and Luthor continue to bait Kal-El by destroying things around the world, the film comes full circle. Were back to that fight between Ty-Zor and Superman. We go back into that NASA hangar. Only this time, we see what Superman sees. We see what terrifies him and what starts to hurt him.
Lois Lane, submerged in water, drowning, moored to the floor of a water tank next to a giant chunk of Kryptonite. Meaning if Superman goes in to save her, hes going to die. And if he doesnt, hell watch her die.
So... he does what Superman would do.
He goes in.
And he dies.
Ahhhh... didnt see that coming, did you? You thought we were done with the Death of Superman, didnt you?
Evidently not. Peters seems determined to shoehorn in the artificial emotion of a syrupy, lengthy, pointless funeral sequence. Lois gets to cry. Everyone gets to be very solemn.
But who the hell are they kidding? One of the fundamental problems with trying to kick off a franchise with a Death of Superman story is that WE KNOW HE CANT ****ING DIE. I mean, have a little faith in the audience. Why would we want to invest fifteen minutes of sorrow into a storyline we know isnt going to play out? This is part one of an announced trilogy. Hes not going to stay in the ground.
And the way they bring him back has got to be one of the dumbest, dippiest, New Age bull**** scenes in a major franchise picture that I can think of. Its ri-goddamn-diculous. Jor-El senses the death of his son all the way from Krypton, so he slices his own stomach open and goes to Heaven where he explains to Jor-El that he CANT die. I halfway expected him to say, Look, son, this is just the first film in the trilogy. You cant be dead yet. His excuse isnt much better. He explains that The Prophecy says that the Son of Krypton will defeat a great trial on a distant planet before coming home to kick some ass. And since I know youre going to come save Krypton, you cant die on Earth.
Kal-El cant really argue with such spotless logic, so he returns to his body and digs himself out of the grave where he was put to rest.
Seriously. Jor-El argues him out of being dead.
By this time, Luthors in the White House, and the Kryptonians are celebrating. They dont know that Superman is back. They dont suspect a thing as he goes to Lois, learns all about Kryptonite, then secretly organizes the entire United Nations for a plan to put the big hurtin on Ty-Zor and his boys. And girls. Theres a couple of Ursa wannabes in the group. Once everythings in place, Superman goes to the White House and calls everyone out for the big final action sequence.
And when I say big, I mean B I G.
Air combat between five superpowered Kryptonians and fighter jets from 24 nations. Kryptonite missiles. Ass-kickin on a level weve never seen before on film.
It reads like itll cost $400 million. Im predicting right now... theres no way theyre going to be able to make something this big unless theyre willing to invest TITANIC sized money into the thing. And with a film that is going to infuriate fans as much as this one will, thats not a sure-thing investment. In fact, its a pretty major risk.
And just in case youre not infuriated yet, let me give you the last big spoiler in this thing. As Randy Newman once sang, I just want you to hurt... like I do...
Ysee, after all the Kryptonians are dead, Supermans getting ready to go back home. Hes gonna go to Krypton because the Prophecy says so. Never mind the fact that he wont have any superpowers back there. Never mind the fact that we DONT FREAKING CARE about what happens on Krypton. Thats the set-up for part two, and Superman is in midst of his tearful farewell when Luthor shows up.
And that sinking feeling I got earlier came back. I knew it before it even happened. That thing I was so afraid of... Abrams is going to go for it, I thought... and I kept reading, almost peeking at the pages between my fingers...
Luthor tells Superman that he has come for him. And not in the way he thinks, either. He begins to rant about what a goddamn spectacular job hes done, rambling like hes lost his mind.
LUTHOR
The good soldier. The loyal. The dedicated. The tenacious. Thats me. When others would have quit when others have. I kept up the charade. Following orders that made me sick! To impersonate the very thing I despise most in the universe.
(to Lois, with disdain)
Those like you.
And by now, I was practically screaming at the script. NO! DONT DO IT! DONT DO WHAT YOURE GOING TO DO, YOU STUPID FREAKIN...
LUTHOR
I was hoping to do this on a slightly larger scale, SUPERMAN... but here we are. And the only way for me to be the good soldier is to tell you the truth.
(intense, evil beat)
No, that pod the CIA recovered... it wasnt yours.
A long insane dramatic beat and just as we get it:
LUTHOR
IT WAS MINE!
And then Luthor flies. Seriously.
And he and Superman have yet another superfight.
Because 30 pages of superfights wasnt enough.
And because someone, somewhere, for some completely mystifying reason has decided that it would be a good idea to make Lex Luthor a superpowered 50 year old who knows better kung-fu than Superman.
In the long history of really stupid ideas in bringing superheroes to the bigscreen, this far surpasses the Amazing Hummingbird Man and Hot Guy from one of the lousy HULK drafts. I honestly think this is worse as an overall idea than Arnolds Mr. Freeze and a bat credit card.
Hes Lex Luthor.
And hes got superpowers. And he flies.
The end of the film sets up Clark to go home to Krypton. It sets up Lex as a prisoner, ripe to escape for the next movie.
And for all the world, it reads to me like Clark is going home to Naboo to study with Yoda so he can be the king of Krypton or some such nonsense.
And as his rocket blasts off from a cornfield and Marth Kent waves at him, I was left with my jaw hanging open, shocked.
I... I... sweet God, I hate this script.
Please, Brett Ratner. Dont do this. JJ Abrams... youre better than this. I know Jon Peters is involved, and I know hes determined that any DC superhero film made has to be incredibly ****ty and stupid, but DONT LISTEN TO HIM!!
Please, Alan Horn... call Avi Arad. Ask him what the secret is. Learn from him. Hire someone who really loves this property and let them make a damn good Superman adventure film.
Im begging you. I put all this detail into this column because I want you to read the reactions of the Talk Backers below. I want you to pay attention to the reaction across the entire Net. Listen to the fans. Theyll tell you if this is what they want.
And maybe it is. Maybe you want martial arts fights in mid-air. Maybe you want a superpowered Lex Luthor. Maybe you want a Krypton that didnt explode and an ancient Prophecy and a second film thats not set on Earth. Maybe that all sounds good to you, and youre all going to tell me that Im crazy, or that Im overreacting, or that Ive failed to grasp the conceptual brilliance of this thing.
Somehow, though... I doubt that.
I dont want to hate SUPERMAN. I want to love SUPERMAN. Even if its not one of the things I hold dear as a fan, I have a respect for the character that stretches all the way back to the first time I read a comic book with the character in it, and the first time I sat in a theater as Donners film or the Fleisher cartoons played. I may not be nuts about Superman, but I know him when I see him.
And this aint him.
Of course he did.
Superman was a red blooded hetero and every red blooded hetero knows that, if you gave a secret signal watch to your GIRLFRIEND she'd be using it to check up on you every fifteen minutes:
"Superman, honey, be a dear and run to Paris and pick up some fresh brie for me....can you drop off this dress at the dry cleaners....why haven't you called...Why are you so distant lately...We never talk anymore...what do you mean you're on a case...all you ever think about is your career....etc."
;-)
On thing i really liked about Lois & Clark was that they made Clark the suave confident one, and supes the one who was slightly unsure about himself.
As Clark explained it to Lois after (he said: Superman can't to that. - she said: What do you mean Clark, you are Superman)
"No Lois, Superman is just what I do. Clark is who I am."
He's been Clark all his life. Superman is the disguise. And it's his humanity that makes him a hero, not the sub-adolescent power fantasy of this script.
The good news is that, I think, that Batman script is out. The bad news is, I think, they canceled it to make way for this film.
But, is he still Superman's pal?
Of course, that's it, Bizarro is the producer.
Real World: Krypton explodes
Bizarro World: Krypton doesn't explode
Real World: Lex human
Bizarro World: Lex alien
Unless of course, Mxylplyx has something to with this. (yeah, I know I misspelled it)
[Warner Brothers executives are] absolutely furious at Aint It Cool News' review of the script and [the studio] is complete panic mode. Heads are rolling and the entire studio is in turmoil. It seems they are scared to death they may have another BATMAN & ROBIN situation on their hands (they do) where negative buzz kills the film before it is even released. This time before it is even shot! The entire project is now in jeopardy and that they may have to throw out the entire script and start over.Someone who HATED the script and fought against it is the one who leaked it. But basically, there are a few people in the company who understand how bad the script is and that it will be a disaster the likes of which the company has never seen. We're talking a "CUTTHROAT ISLAND" sized bomb.
The Aint It Cool News review is 100% correct.
By the way, the studio heads, many of them have never seen the Donner film and do not know ANYTHING about the origins of SUPERMAN, which explains why they loved the Luthor is an alien concept.
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